"But when I saw Tupac like that - coming out of the hospital, all skinny and small-looking in that wheelchair, big guards around him — I remember thinking, 'He ain't gonna try to get revenge on nobody and he ain't trying to be a disgrace to anybody either. Just trying to keep on.' Even though he wasn't smiling, I knew he was just happy and confused about still being alive."
Prologue, p. 3

"And then it made sense to me - crazy-fast sense in a way it hadn't before. D walked out of her own life each time she stepped into one of those other places. She got off the bus or walked up out of the subway and her life disappeared, got replaced by that new place, those new strangers - like big pink erasers."
Chap. 1, p. 18)